You’ll be glad to know that as soon as the politicians stop sending out press releases due to the holidays, “journalists” have to create their own work. One has OIAed departments to see how much they are spending per head on a Christmas do.

GOVERNMENT CHRISTMAS PARTIES

Defence Force: No Christmas party.

Ministry of Health: $12.50 per person. No staff contribution required.

Ministry for Women: $14.70 per person. No staff contribution required.

Ministry of Education: $15 per person. Subsidised by contributions from the Ministry’s Leadership team.

John Key seems to have lost his smiling assassin reputation, going all squeamish on addressing costs int eh public service as tax revenues fall.

Prime Minister John Key is pledging no cuts to public services in Bill English’s seventh Budget, despite low interest rates and falling prices carving billions from the Crown’s coffers over the next four years.

On May 21 Finance Minister English will release the Budget, which is expected to show National failing to hit its often repeated target of reaching surplus this year.

Although Key has not given up on reaching surplus when the final accounts for 2014/15 are released, he appeared to announce details of Treasury’s forecasts for this month’s Budget showing a squeeze on the tax take.

“The very factors that are helping households and businesses get ahead are making aspects of the Government’s finances more challenging,” Key told reporters at his weekly post Cabinet press conference on Monday.

There is a good chance that the PSA would probably have a fit and march in the streets if this was tried here:

All departments in Whitehall are to be forced to publish quarterly sickness absence rates for all their staff in a bid to help the public purse.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister responsible for the civil service, said “bad management” across the public sector was costing taxpayers £3.4bn a year. He told the Daily Telegraph he was determined to crack down on the so-called “sickie” culture by making central government departments publish the sickness reports and increasing the spotlight on weak management.

“It’s often down to bad management. If you do the stats properly, you can sometimes find clusters of sickness absence which is often associated with a bad manager,” he said.

Official figures show public sector workers are 63pc more likely to go off sick than their private sector counterparts. Mr Maude said the civil service had to get better at measuring the problem. “One of the things we’re introducing is that every department will have to publish, on a quarterly basis, their sickness absence levels, so you can see the trend and can compare,” he said.

The move follows plans announced last week by the Cabinet Office minister to reform the civil service, which includes weeding out poor performers to improve the delivery of public services.

The profusion of senior executive service personnel, the 2790 bureaucrats in Canberra who typically earn between $200,000 and $360,000 a year, is even starker. Their number remained broadly flat between 1984 and 2001, but since then their ranks have almost doubled. Entire suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne are paying tax to support these jobs.

Causation runs the other way too. The public service has become so large and top-heavy with overpaid bureaucrats that private salaries are being driven up to giddy heights. The private sector has to offer more money because it cannot guarantee security. Ultimately, this makes consumer prices higher and profits lower. Remuneration in the public sector has lost its moral compass too. As the latest taxation statistics show, 90 per cent of taxpayers have taxable incomes of less than $100,000 a year. If any of these people refused to pay tax because they judged that having 118 people earning more than $280,000 in the departments of climate change and sustainability, for instance, was absurd, they would go to prison. However offensive some pay packets in the corporate world might be, shareholders could still sell their shares.

There are way too many well paid troughing hippies in Australia. Hopefully Abbott will close these departments. Climate change and sustainability staff don’t need to be paid close to $300,000.

After the orchestrated obfuscation of oberac by Labour, Michael Cullen, Maryan Street and member of the ACC board it is time to add some more names to the ever growing list of people who need to be Boris-ed.

The ACC Board Chairman Ross Wilson should be the first to go. A ex-CTU President and Labour lackey of the first order. Followed in short order by Peter Neilson, ex-Labour MP and Minister, who is also the chairman of the Labour inspired Business Council for Sustainable Development.

At the same time I’d also send a DCM to Wayne Butson, another union trough snuffler from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union.

I’d put a shot across the bows of Pip Dunphy and Sara Lunam who appear on paper to have qualifications for Board positions but also are double dipping by also being board members of NZ Post where the traitor Jim Bolger is Chairman. To have two board appointments suggests that this duo might be members of the “sisterhood” or ardent loyal lickspittles.